Winter Lord: Starting with Daily Intelligence

Chapter 459 An Infuriating Trap
The morning mist hung heavy outside Whitestone Town, and the Vatican's defenses were silent. The entire position resembled a swamp piled with corpses, and the silence was chilling.

On the top floor of the mill, there is a long-forgotten exhaust chimney.

That was a safety structure left over from the old days to prevent flour dust from exploding, but it has long since lost its meaning.

The inner wall of the flue was covered with a thick layer of old black ash, mixed with moldy flour stains, and its color resembled rotten blood scabs.

Old Hans got stuck in that narrow chimney.

This is a place the Vatican's search teams would never give a second glance.

First, there was the smell: the sour smell of fermenting rotten grain, the stench of dead rats, and a nauseating stench of grease and soot that perfectly masked the smell of living people.

Even the most sensitive hunting dogs will turn away impatiently when they smell this scent.

Just in case, Hans covered his entire body with black ash and waste oil, leaving only his eyes exposed.

He peered through the barely perceptible crack in the chimney at the desolate wasteland beyond the town. He wanted to see with his own eyes what would become of this little town, no matter what…

At this moment, old Hans' body was trembling, because he was witnessing hell.

On that muddy open ground north of the town, a massive flesh-and-blood battle line was formed by defensive structures made of various thorns.

Several hundred other children were neatly planted in the soil, some from their town, and others from who-knows-where.

The spacing was deliberately controlled within a consistent stride, arranged almost reverently.

Only the upper body is exposed, like crops waiting to be harvested, or like some kind of carefully arranged offering.

Hans almost instinctively started counting, but quickly gave up.

His gaze began to unconsciously search for familiar faces.

The blacksmith's youngest son, the baker's daughter, and the grandson of the plump aunt next door.

One by one, names surfaced in his mind. They were all children he had watched grow up. Their smiles from the past were still vivid in his mind, but now they were being used as a trap and had long since lost their own consciousness.

The children were holding black alchemical explosive packs in their arms.

The thing was too big for them, and some children had to hold it tightly with both arms.

The crude fuse wires extended from the explosives and were uniformly buried in the soil behind the site by the Vatican's craftsmen, like ugly and cruel umbilical cords.

The Papacy was well aware of the characteristics of Louis and his army: their chariots could crush thorn knights, they could ignore mobs, and they could answer any threat with cannon fire.

But they can't fire at a whole row of children.

If the explosives are buried directly in the ground, the Red Tide can be dealt with in other ways. However, if it is an adult believer, the Red Tide will not hesitate to eliminate the target.

Only by placing the explosives in the arms of children, binding the fuse to their heartbeats, can the battlefield be forcibly transformed from a military issue into a moral one.

The children didn't cry or fuss, and they didn't even shiver from the cold wind.

Every pair of eyes was wide open, the pupils a murky gray-gold color, unfocused, staring blankly northward.

"You beast..."

Hans bit his hand so hard that his teeth dug into his flesh.

But he dared not utter a sound, and could only let his tears flow silently, washing away the black ash on his face and leaving light-colored marks on his skin.

A beast in human skin.

They used children as shields, as landmines, as roadblocks to force the Red Tide tanks to stop.

Suddenly the earth began to tremble.

On the northern horizon, a black line slowly appeared.

At first, it was just an outline, but it gradually differentiated into huge steel behemoths.

That was the vanguard tank formation of the Red Tide.

The tracks rolled across the earth, producing a deep, rhythmic rumble, like the heartbeat of an ancient behemoth, one beat after another.

Looking at those cold, steel figures, Hans felt a conflict that was almost tearing him apart.

He had heard from the bards from the north and the papacy that this thing was incredibly powerful and might be able to defeat those beasts, and he hoped they would do so.

But once the fighting starts, the children of this land will be reduced to pieces of flesh and blood in an instant.

If no fire is fired, the fuse will be ignited as soon as the tank gets close, and the tank will be blown to smithereens.

The Vatican is gambling that the Northern Lord named Louis still retains the mercy of a mortal.

As expected, the Red Tide army stopped, only a few hundred meters away from the children.

Hans closed his eyes; he couldn't bear to watch any longer: "It's over...it's all over."

…………

Behind the tank, Vance, the deputy commander of the Second Red Tide Legion, unconsciously began to breathe shallowly.

Through the telescope, the front lines were fragmented into gray-white mosaic pieces by the morning mist.
The Vatican has transformed the entire land into a living trap.

The muddy ground was filled with chevaux-de-frise made of dark red thorns.

Those thorns were not dead plants, but were slowly wriggling, their skin covered with barbs, like blood vessels that had been forcibly straightened and hardened.

Embedded among the thorns are wooden stakes soaked in alchemical solutions. If a heavy object runs over them, the thorns will tighten on their own, locking the tracks and tripping the warhorses.

Further behind, there was a layer of grayish-white mist that drifted along the ground.

That wasn't naturally formed fog, but rather a low-altitude toxic fog mixed with hallucinogenic pollen and painkillers.

Even a fully armed knight, after just a few breaths, will become disoriented and lose his sense of time, becoming an easy target.

What's terrifying is that their only route is lined with rows of children whose upper bodies are exposed.

They were planted in the soil like stakes, clutching black alchemical explosives in their arms.

The rough fuse wire extends from the explosive casing, merges with the ground behind it, and connects with the thorns, blast-proof stakes, and fog zone to form a whole, like a carefully woven trap, waiting for them to fall into it.

Vance's palms were sweaty. What he saw was not an enemy formation, but a whole defensive system built around the child.

The children were thin and frail, with delicate yet emaciated faces.

Every pair of their eyes was open, their gray-gold pupils appearing unusually cloudy in the mist.

Occasionally someone blinks, but it's mechanical, like a broken gear spinning aimlessly.

In that instant, Vance clenched his teeth, making a subtle yet piercing sound; he was furious.

He had witnessed the most horrific scenes of carnage and bloodshed on the snowy plains of the North, and had personally ordered artillery bombardments of enemy lines, causing countless casualties.

But all of that happened within the rules of the battlefield, and what we see before us doesn't even deserve to be called war.

It is blasphemy, the most thorough trampling of humanity.

Vance's Adam's apple bobbed violently.

"Sir... let's take a detour." His voice trembled, not from weakness, but from suppressed rage. "Seven hundred meters away. But if the tanks continue to advance..."

He kept his eyes on the camera lens as he said this.

“Those are hundreds of children,” Vance practically spat out the words. “In the eyes of heretics, they aren’t even human, but our knights…”

Before he could finish speaking, the air around the command vehicle seemed to freeze for a moment.

The Knights of the Red Tide stood between the armored vehicles and tanks. No one spoke, but everyone's thoughts were almost identical.

The knights of the Red Tide can accept death, sacrifice, and even defeat. But they cannot accept that someone is using children as weapons.

Vance finished speaking in a low voice, his voice almost hoarse: "These lunatics... they don't treat those kids like human beings at all."

Beside the command vehicle, Legion Commander Gray calmly said, "Lord Louis had long anticipated that something like this would happen."

Gray turned around, looked at the artillery position, and gave the order: "Special shell No. 3, frost leaf shell, airburst fuse, height 15 meters."

Vance paused for a moment, then his eyes lit up, and he stood at attention, replying, "Understood."

Gray raised his hand: "Execute."

"Puff—puff—puff—" A muffled and restrained growl came from the position.

The shell left the barrel, tracing a gentle arc.

It didn't land on the battlefield, but exploded right above the children's heads.

A deep blue, frigid mist suddenly burst open in the air, like a torn curtain of night, one after another, instantly covering the entire front line.

The fog was so thick it seemed impossible to disperse, carrying the chilling scent unique to the North, with the aromas of mint and wormwood spreading rapidly through the air.

"The results came out faster than expected."

Vance put down his binoculars and looked at the human bombs lying in a deep sleep, his eyes filled with complex emotions.

This is not a new weapon. Back in the early days of the Red Tide Territory's pioneering work, this blue sap extracted from Frostleaf Vine was merely a simple tranquilizer used to suppress the Firescale Viper's violent instincts.

But Lord Louis astutely recognized its strategic potential to stabilize magic and sever spiritual resonance.

Over the past decade, Master Alchemist Hilko has complained a lot about this formula.

While complaining that "great alchemy should not be used to make powerful sleeping pills," he was forced to carry out more than a dozen technological iterations under the lord's strict orders.

From the initial Evangelion Unit-01, which could only make the Berserk Rabbits dazed for a few seconds, to the later ability to isolate the mental pollution of the Mother Nest, and now to the Deep Blue V, which can instantly and forcibly cool the central nervous system of thousands of people through the respiratory system.

This is more than just medicine; it is the only antidote Lord Louis has prescribed for this insane war.

Old Hans, who was hiding in the mill chimney, slowly opened his eyes.

He instinctively tensed his body, waiting for the expected explosion and screams.

But nothing happened.

After the gunfire subsided, the world fell silent.

The blue fog, like a giant blanket, slowly descended, covering the entire polluted land.

Hans saw that the red-robed priest who had been holding the detonation rope suddenly stopped moving.

His hand froze in mid-air, as if all support had been removed.

The next second, the priest's eyes rolled back, and he fell straight backward, crashing heavily into the mud.

The children in front fell down even faster, in droves.

Those human-shaped stakes seemed to have a switch flipped within seconds of coming into contact with the blue mist.

His once stiff and upright body instantly lost its strength, his head drooped to his chest, and his thin shoulders collapsed forward.

The black explosive pack slipped from their arms and rolled into the muddy water.

Hans stared intently at the position, his fingers digging into the cracks in the chimney bricks.

He saw the children's backs rising and falling slightly; they were not dead, they were just asleep.

The deep blue mist flowed silently across the battlefield, swallowing up all sound, even the wind seemed to have stopped.

At that moment, it was as if the whole world had been put on pause.

Old Hans's chest suddenly swelled up and then collapsed, a feeling akin to surviving a catastrophe.

"The children survived..." He repeated these seven words to himself over and over again, as if confirming reality for himself.

The blue mist, like a layer of calm snow, covered the madness. He even had a fleeting, absurd thought: perhaps everything really would end here.

But this thought lasted less than a breath.

Deep within the fog, a muffled tremor suddenly came from the ground.

At first, there was only a slight tremor, as if some enormous creature was turning over underground.

But just seconds later, the tremor turned into a continuous rumble of thunder.

It was the echo of thousands upon thousands of iron boots striking the earth simultaneously.

Old Hans stared intently at the gap in the chimney, his pupils suddenly contracting.

The thick, dark blue mist was forcibly torn apart.

The Thorn Knights burst through the fog and surged in from all directions.

Their numbers were so numerous it was despairing—hundreds, perhaps thousands?
They formed a dense square formation, like a black tsunami on the move.

Each knight's armor looked as if it had been stitched back together by living thorns, with dark red roots emerging from the seams, wriggling along the shoulders, neck, and back, and piercing into the flesh of the warhorse.

Those warhorses had no skin, only bright red flesh covered with thorns, and what came out of their nostrils was not white breath, but yellow smoke with a damp, putrid smell.

The massive army remained deathly silent, save for the metallic scraping and the creaking of its roots.

They flocked in from all directions, including the minefield of children who had just been hypnotized.

The children were still asleep in the blue mist, their heads lolling in the mud, their explosive packs lying scattered around them.

Hans had assumed the knights would go around them, or at least slow down.

But no, the Thorn Knights in the front row didn't even lower their heads.

Their eyes were fixed on the Red Tide tank in the distance.

Those children at their feet are not lives to them, not even roadblocks.

"Pfft-"

It was a muffled thud that sent chills down your spine.

It's like a ripe watermelon being smashed by a hammer.

The red and white splattered onto the knight's greaves, but was quickly absorbed by the wriggling roots on them, leaving not a trace.

Then came the second, the third...

"Snap, snap, splat..."

The dense sound of bones cracking, mixed with the roar of the march, was like an accompaniment to hell.

In just over ten seconds, it was trampled into a bloody, mangled red carpet.

Hans's stomach churned violently, and a metallic sweetness rose in his throat.

He bit his lip so hard that it was pierced and blood flowed into his mouth.

The mist continued to flow, and the Thorn Knight, stepping on the layer of flesh and mud, grew faster and faster, like a wall of despair covered in thorns, pressing towards the Crimson Tide's position from all directions.

Old Hans curled up in the chimney; he didn't want to pray anymore. God was useless against this.

All he wanted to see was fire, the most intense fire that could burn all this sin to ashes.

(End of this chapter)